Saving working photo while sending a copy to email

[Townsedan]

Forgive me if this has been asked before...

I want to send a copies of working photos to get opinions while being able to continue edit. 

How do I save the work in Lightroom so I can continue editing, while sending a copy? I tried this once and lost my ework. 

[JP Hess]

You can export a copy, which you can then send by e-mail to whomever you choose. Or, if you are using Lightroom Classic, you could create a collection and share the image in the collection on Lightroom.adobe.com. Then you could send a link to that collection to others so that they could see the image on that website and follow its progression as you continue the editing process. Of coarse, you could even do that if you are using Lightroom for the cloud.

[Rob_Cullen]

Also, if you like emailing a photo from the Lightroom interface-

When you are Developing (editing) an image, make a Snapshot (with a description suitable) when you email the version you are currently at. You can then easily return to any 'Snapshot' state of the image. No repeated exporting is needed.

[Townsedan]

Thanks for the advice. But I am still having problems. I exported  a photo to my desktop. (All photos are on an external hard drive.) I can see the photo on the desktop. It is a jpeg.  I am getting the error message that the file couldn't be opened.

Again I am wanting to save work in progress as a jpeg so that I can email the photo. (I want to save my work in lightroom.)

I tried opening it in Photoshop and saving. It saved the photo as a new file I created. However, it too will not open.

Thanks again for any advice.

[Rob_Cullen]

"File couldn't be opened" - 'Opened' by what software? Opened where?

Are you trying to 'Attach'  JPG file to email?

Can you provide your 'Export' options that you use to Export to the Desktop?